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Preparing for Spring

As Landscapers it is our job to know how to prepare a home for the long seasons of Spring, Summer & Fall. There is a lot of work that goes into the beginning of the process, but it is a matter of keeping up with your lawn and landscape to keep it within grasp.

1. Pruning back all of your grasses and nipping extra growth from the fall is vital. It is very important to cut your grasses back early, Early to Mid March, to ensure they will provide new visible growth early in the spring. It is also important to nip your shrubs here and there throughout your landscape. Not only will this will provide your shrubs with a clean fresh look for Spring, but it will also provide your shrubs with the opportunity for new growth.

2. Edging your beds is a necessity. It is very important to edge the grass along your beds, no more than a 1″ from the current edge and 4″ down is required. By edging your beds you are establishing a fresh look and removing grass that has been encroaching your flower beds. One extra tip would be to rake away the extra soil that falls close to the new bed edge, this will help your much stay within the bed and not fall onto the lawn.

3. Mulching your flower beds is an important step to establishing a clean fresh look to your landscape. The mulch really provides that clean finish look once you have pruned all of your shrubs/grasses and neatly edged your flower beds. We would recommend using a pre-emergent to throw on the soil before you mulch to reduce weeds, this really does end up helping in the long run. Laying roughly 2″ of triple processed much is your next step. We use both black and hardwood, depending on our clients preference. One tip is to mulch to the edge of the flower beds. Don’t pile up mulch against the new bed edge in order to keep the clean fresh look.

4. One last tip for you would be fertilizing and aerating your lawn. This is sometimes something best left for landscape companies in your local area, for example Healthy Lawn a division of Peabody Landscape Group for the greater Columbus, OH area. When aerating, do it when the soil is moist and cores are at least 2″-3″ in length. The second suggestion we have is to apply Pre-emergent herbicides to control crabgrass and other annual grassy weeds. The deadline for applying this application would be mid-April in Central Ohio. Some examples of pre-emergent herbicides are Balan, Dacthal, Chipco and Pendimethalin.

We hope these tips get you off to a great start this Spring. If you have any questions feel free to post. We will be providing many more helpful posts to get your lawn looking beautiful year round, enjoy!